The demonization strategy implemented by the National Rally sometimes encounters pitfalls. While the party denies any links to radical far-right groups, some of the candidates in the legislative elections have made controversial statements that may amount to racism or discrimination.
Several of them reached the second round of the legislative elections and could be elected this Sunday, July 7, to sit in the National Assembly.
A withdrawal and two controversies
The case of Roger Chudeau was emblematic. The outgoing MP in the 2nd constituency of Loir-et-Cher is in a good position to be re-elected, while he had declared on June 28 that a member of the government could not be binational, taking the example of the former Minister of National Education, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem. This statement provoked several indignant reactions, including that of Marine Le Pen.
At the same time, Ludivine Daoudi had to withdraw her candidacy in the 1st constituency of Calvados after the publication of a photo in which she is seen wearing a Nazi cap.
A few kilometres away, in the 1st constituency of Mayenne, Paule Veyre de Soras also caused a reaction after she assured that the party was not racist in a video. “I myself am Catalan, my grandfather was born in Barcelona. My ophthalmologist is a Jew. And my dentist is a Muslim,” she tried to justify herself.
Migrants “cowardly and selfish”
Some candidates have never hidden their past or their ideas. Frédéric Boccaletti, outgoing MP in the 7th constituency of Var, convicted in 2000 for “group violence with weapons” and then pardoned for health reasons, according to information from Libération, has been filling his speech with hateful remarks against migrants for years. Var-Matin revealed in 2022 that Frédéric Boccaletti was also known in Toulon for having opened a bookstore called Anthinéa in 1997, in reference to a work by Charles Maurras, an anti-Semitic author.
In 2016, Marion Maréchal’s former campaign manager called refugees in his department after fleeing a country at war “cowards” and “selfish.” “Who else can leave their country at war, abandoning their parents, wives and children?” he asked on Facebook. In 2018, to limit the arrival of “illegal immigrants,” Frédéric Boccaletti proposed “enlisting them in the Foreign Legion and sending them back to fight in the country they left.” He won 48% of the vote in the first round on June 30.
With 45% of the vote, René Lioret is well placed to win the 5th constituency of Côte-d’Or. On his X account (ex-Twitter), the RN regional councilor has been pointing the finger for several years at “African scum”, or “scum for many of them from immigration”, whom he holds responsible for the increase in crime in France.
On April 22, 2024, he commented on a video showing Gabriel Attal announcing the experiment of boarding schools reserved for school dropouts in Nice. “Not a single little blond head among these school dropouts…”, wrote René Lioret.
Insecurity is at the heart of the RN’s discourse. Maïtey Pouget, François Hollande’s rival in the 1st constituency of Corrèze, said on LCI on Friday from Brive-la-Gaillarde that France “is starting to be invaded” by immigration, but not “at this time” because “they are sleeping”. Stéphanie Alarcon, candidate in the 3rd constituency of Toulouse, mentioned several times on X “the ethnic war” that she believes is coming in the country.
In Brittany, an investigation has been opened to examine the comments published on Facebook by Françoise Billaud, candidate in Côtes-d’Armor, Ouest-France revealed. She had relayed on Facebook an image suggesting support for “heterosexuality while it is still legal”. In 2021, she had shared a post from an Internet user showing Pétain’s grave, with the caption “July 23, 1951, death in detention of Philippe Pétain, Marshal of France”, as noted by Libération. Her account has since been deleted.
Brigitte Barèges, a figure of the right in Occitanie, is one of the members of the Republicans to have joined Éric Ciotti’s alliance with the RN. She is also one of the rare members of the party’s political bureau to have voted against his exclusion. The one who had been acquitted on appeal of her conviction for embezzlement in 2021 had caused controversy in 2014 after having described a black candidate on her municipal list as a “stain”. A few years earlier, she had also made homophobic remarks in the National Assembly during a debate on same-sex marriage in 2011. “And why not unions with animals? Or polygamy?” she had said.
“Let him return to Africa” launched in the Assembly
The anti-immigration discourse has reached the benches of the National Assembly. Grégoire de Fournas was excluded for two weeks in 2022 for comments made during an intervention by an LFI deputy on migrants. The deputy had launched a resounding “let him go back to Africa” in the Chamber.
He denied any racist nature, assuring that he was talking about the humanitarian boat Ocean Viking, then stranded at sea. Old racist tweets published on his account had also been exhumed at that time.
In January, Marie-Christine Sorin, candidate in the 1st constituency of Hautes-Pyrénées, had stated on X that “not all civilizations are equal” and that some “have just remained below bestiality in the chain of evolution”. The retired National Education official had firmly rejected accusations of racism and denounced “out-of-context remarks”.
According to her, her remarks were aimed at defending women’s rights and denouncing “Sharia (Islamic law applied in some religious states)”, in a response given to Libération and relayed by La Semaine des Pyrénées. Controversies which have so far not slowed down the RN’s race to the front.
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